Got passport? Travel rules tighten Tuesday

January 22, 2007|By Julia Preston the New York Times

A U.S. citizen flying home Monday from a ski jaunt in Canada, a beach break in Mexico or a honeymoon in Jamaica can flash a drivers license or a birth certificate at airport customs officials and walk on through.

On Tuesday, those documents will no longer work.

Starting then, U.S. citizens, including children, returning to this country by air from any country in the Western Hemisphere will have to present passports.

In another change, citizens of Canada and Bermuda traveling to the United States by air also will have to show passports to enter the country. Previously, they, too, could use drivers licenses and birth documents.

U.S. officials, parrying complaints from Canada and Caribbean nations, said the measure was mandated by a 2004 law in which Congress adopted many proposals of the Sept. 11 commission. The purpose is to reduce the types of documents that travelers can use to enter the United States, simplifying the job of inspectors looking for fake or invalid ones.

More than 8,000 styles of birth certificates are issued by agencies in the United States, according to Maura Harty, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs. "No inspector could ever possibly master all of those," Harty said.

The U.S. passports now being issued can be read by scanners in airport customs booths and instantly verified in most cases through a federal database.

The new measure applies only to air travelers. Officials in the Department of Homeland Security said they expected to roll out the same restrictions for passengers arriving by land and sea as early as Jan. 1, 2008.

Until recently, only 27 percent of eligible Americans had passports. The new requirements set off a rush, with a record 12.1 million passports issued last year, Harty said. Despite that rush, she said, the normal time of six weeks or less to process a new passport has not increased.

Customs also will accept merchant-marine cards and Nexus air cards, which are issued to citizens and legal immigrants in the United States and Canada who are frequent travelers and have passed background checks. Active-duty military personnel are exempt.

Canadian travelers are most miffed by the change. Randy Williams, president of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, said confusion about when the new restrictions would go into effect had cost Canada $1.6 billion in lost American tourist dollars since 2005.

Canadian tourism representatives did not object to the passport requirement, Williams said. But he said publicity from Washington explaining the new measures was insufficient and late. Although the new requirements had been in the works since 2004, the Bush administration announced the start date only two months ago, on Nov. 22.

"All our lives, Canada and the United States have enjoyed freedom of travel across a trusting border," Williams said. "Now adding these new costs and bureaucracy to that invisible line will change the psyche. That freedom will become a little more restricted -- in some regards, a victory for terrorism."

Mexican air travelers have long been required to present passports and visas to enter the United States.